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The federal government provided nearly $130 million in low-interest loans to a Westerville-based
nonprofit organization to help ensure that consumers will have choices when shopping the new online
federal health-insurance marketplace next year.

But the nonprofit group — Coordinated Health Mutual, also known as InHealth Mutual — has not
completed all the requirements to get a state license to sell insurance. As a result, it wasn’t
among the plans approved last week by the Ohio Department of Insurance and submitted to the federal
government for review and certification for sale in the online marketplace, or exchange. Enrollment
begins Oct. 1.

Briggs Hamor, CEO of InHealth Mutual, hopes the federal government will let it sell insurance
next year on the exchange once it receives a license, which he anticipates will happen this
month.

“They’ve implied the window might still be open, but it’s not a done deal,” he said on Tuesday.
Later in the week, he said it is “not likely” that InHealth will be approved to sell insurance on
the exchange come January, though he said the organization still hopes to sell health insurance to
individuals and small businesses off the exchange.

InHealth is one of 24 “consumer-operated and -oriented plans” nationwide that have been awarded
a combined $2 billion in loans from the federal government. InHealth received about $129 million.
Such groups are known as CO-OPs, and InHealth is the only one in Ohio. CO-OPs in Vermont and
Massachusetts also have not received a license.The federal government is providing the loans to the
CO-OPs as a way to give consumers more-affordable, user-friendly and reliable health-insurance
options. Ohio consumers, however, still will find plenty of options on the exchange, even if
InHealth is not allowed to sell insurance there.

InHealth Mutual was the next-to-last CO-OP to receive federal loans — the money arrived in
October — and the organization had less than nine months to build a business from scratch, Hamor
said. In hindsight, he said, InHealth should have severed ties sooner with its original sponsor, a
Florida company called CHS America, citing the federal government’s concerns that the relationship
between InHealth and CHS America might create conflicts of interest.

Hamor still believes that InHealth can carry out parts of its nonprofit mission, even if it’s
not part of the exchange’s first year. To date, InHealth has spent about $1.9 million of the
federal dollars allocated to it, he said. “We’re being very frugal.”

He said the Ohio Department of Insurance has not thrown up roadblocks in the licensing process.
The department’s director, Lt. Gov. Mary Taylor, has been a vocal critic of the Affordable Care
Act, of which the CO-OP funding is a part.

The federal government declined to say this week whether InHealth will be allowed to join the
exchange in 2014. Because Ohio’s exchanges will be federally run, the federal government will have
the final say on which licensed insurance companies can take part.bsutherly@dispatch.com